A Nativity
A Nativity - meaning Summary
Modern Figures in the Manger
Yeats stages a grotesque, uncanny nativity where historical and artistic figures intrude on a birth scene. The poem names painters, writers and actors whose imagined interventions—glossy drapery, patched roofs, theatrical gestures—transform the sacred moment into spectacle. The repeated questions build mounting disquiet and end on the mother’s terror, asking whether any mercy remains amid artifice and performance. It suggests art’s power to beautify and to traumatize innocence.
Read Complete AnalysesWhat woman hugs her infant there? Another star has shot an ear. What made the drapery glisten so? Not a man but Delacroix. What made the ceiling waterproof? Landor's tarpaulin on the roof What brushes fly and moth aside? Irving and his plume of pride. What hurries out the knaye and dolt? Talma and his thunderbolt. Why is the woman terror-struck? Can there be mercy in that look?
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